online games

As time goes on, more games are relying on online elements. And while that makes perfect sense for multiplayer games, single-player games are being impacted as well. When are publishers going to get the picture?

At its Gamescom press event in Cologne this week, Sony released a flood of news regarding the PlayStation 4. Without a doubt, the biggest headline was that the PS4 has officially sold through 10 million units, but sprinkled throughout the press conference was some truly exciting info regarding the future of the platform. Specifically, the promise of streaming multiplayer games to my friends has me intrigued.

Valve’s annual Dota 2 tournament — The International — is now one of world’s biggest sporting events. Thanks to the Valve’s most excellent shepherding of both the game and the 5-versus-5 MOBA genre, an ingenious crowdfunding scheme, and the continuing growth of spectator esports, The International now has a total prize fund of over $6 million. The winning team will take home somewhere in the region of $3 million. To put that into perspective, that’s more than all but the top sports professionals take home in a year. How did Dota 2, which only left beta testing last year, become one of the world’s biggest sports in the world?

Over the past two decades, we’ve seen plenty of bizarre hacks, strange devices, and oddball services for online multiplayer. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, there were plenty of attempts to get online multiplayer services up and running for consoles, but nothing ever gained substantial traction in the United States until the Xbox 360 hit shelves in 2005. It’s practically a mandatory feature for any AAA game on modern consoles now, so let’s take a moment to admire how far we’ve come.

While you might fondly call the hell-raising inhabitants of online gaming haunts like DotA and Xbox Live terrorists, the NSA and CIA both felt that certain online gaming communities are home to the real thing. So, they did what any good security agency would do, and started spying on bored gamers who are forever killing 10 rats and crafting epic gear.

Taiwanese researchers at the Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University are using electromyography (EMG) to track small muscle movements in the faces of the focus group members. From there, they can estimate how much fun, and how addictive, the gameplay is.

Being plagued by gameplay, loot, and connectivity issues is bad enough — but, to put it bluntly, the addition of the Real Money Auction House ruined the game. With the RMAH, Blizzard has turned the entire userbase into an army of sweatshop slaves.

Over the last week, Blizzard’s decision to make Diablo 3 require an internet connection has blown up in the media. Believe it or not, though, this isn’t about DRM — it’s all about making the game more enjoyable to play.

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